{"id":320352,"date":"2025-12-01T10:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T10:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/320352\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T10:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T10:29:08","slug":"chloe-rollie-opens-up-about-latest-french-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/320352\/","title":{"rendered":"Chloe Rollie opens up about latest French adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Scotland<\/a> full-back Chloe Rollie<\/a> likes a challenge. How else do you explain leaving the relative certainty of Premiership Women\u2019s Rugby<\/a> side Trailfinders<\/a> Women after one season for a side that has just been promoted to the top-flight AXA Elite 1 league in France?<\/p>\n

She explained it in five words: \u201cI just needed a change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed a different environment,\u201d the 30-year-old continued. \u201cA different challenge. And it wasn\u2019t just the rugby that I had to learn. It was also the language, the culture, a new group of girls, [in] a team that had just come into the Elite 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Trailfinders\u2019 full-back swapped leagues and crossed the Channel to become Rugby Club Toulon Provence M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e\u2019s full-back for their Elite 1 debut, a matter of weeks after four high-intensity Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup<\/a> outings.<\/p>\n

The French competition is not entirely alien to Rollie. She made her professional debut for Lille Metropole Rugby Club Villeneuvois in October 2017 and helped the team to the semi-finals of what was then France\u2019s Top 8 league.<\/p>\n

That was the better part of a decade ago and in another part of the country. About as far away as it\u2019s possible to be from Toulon in metropolitan France.<\/p>\n

Even so, Rollie remembers that period in her early career fondly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was in France<\/a> last time, up in Lille, I enjoyed the way that they played,\u201d she recalled. \u201cIt was a bit more free and a bit more \u2018do what you want to do as a player\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt a bit stuck where I was. The way we played [was] very structured, very by the book. You go through this step, then you do this and then you do this.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn France it\u2019s more heads-up rugby playing what\u2019s in front of you. That\u2019s the kind of player I am. I can catch the ball and one thing can change in front of me, so why play that same call or that same move if something\u2019s different?\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s really rather the point, as far as she\u2019s concerned.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone plays the game to have fun,\u201d Rollie said. \u201cYou want the result at the end, but we play the game because we enjoy it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like sometimes, in PWR, it was a bit more like going through the motions \u2014 we\u2019re going to do this and we\u2019re going to do that. In France, we\u2019ll try this \u2014 if it works, great, if not, see what\u2019s going on next. How else do you want to attack the game? What do you see in front of you? How are you going to exploit that?\u201d<\/p>\n

That freedom to play instinctively is rugby life for instinct players like Rollie.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to find the gap,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to find the space. I want to find the weaknesses in defence.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, playing full-back, you catch the ball and you\u2019ve got three decisions to make \u2014 run, kick or pass. If I have options in other phases of play, it\u2019s perfect for me because anything can change in front and you just need to play off-the-cuff rugby. For me, it\u2019s really good to play with a bit of freedom, to express myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The start of the season has been as expected, something of a baptism of fire for Rollie and her new Toulon team-mates. Five defeats in six outings in an opening block that has included matches against big name clubs in the women\u2019s game \u2014 Blagnac, Montpellier, Grenoble, Toulouse and Bobigny. Their sole win to date has come at home against Lyon.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been difficult, Rollie admitted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis team needs to find its feet in terms of setup and environment and professionalism. It takes time for the mentality to change. Elite 2 was probably a lot easier.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re building every game. We played Blagnac, and only lost by seven points. It\u2019s not a big margin, especially against a team like that. It was a close game and a very good performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cTthen we played Montpellier and the first half was really not great at all. But this is what Elite 1\u2019s like. Teams will punish you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The victory, by two points over Lyon, was another \u2018really tough game\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe scored in the last minute. So, yes, we won. But it wasn\u2019t easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t want her team-mates to be overawed by the 15 players in front of them every week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey might have internationals, they might look really strong. But if we get our gameplan right and we get our points in the match right, there\u2019s no reason we can\u2019t win \u2026 if we get all our processes right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Her second French adventure comes at what looks a lot like a powerful inflexion point of the women\u2019s game in the country. Talk out of FFR headquarters even before the tournament was that the 2025 Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup<\/a> would be a springboard to a better future.<\/p>\n

Insurance giants AXA have come on board as title sponsors of the domestic women\u2019s Elite 1 league for the next three seasons, as part of a project to triple the budgets of leading clubs.<\/p>\n

In November, Francois Ratier was named as the next coach of France<\/a>. He will officially take charge on January 5, 2026, with an ambitious remit to \u2018contribute to the design, implementation, and management of an ambitious performance project aimed at leading the French Women\u2019s XV to the World Cup title in 2029\u2019.<\/p>\n

As a player from the standard-bearing PWR, Rollie sees how far the top-flight game in France has to go, the scale of the challenge in front of French rugby. It is, she believes, some five years behind the English league. That\u2019s a lot of ground to make up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not as professional over here, it\u2019s more a hobby,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople play this game for fun rather than as a job or a main focus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe girls work all day, then turn up to training. Some girls arrive late because they\u2019ve had to work late. In PWR, when I left, that wasn\u2019t the case. There are a lot of full-time athletes turning up at one in the afternoon to do skills whereas, here, we\u2019re having to wait until 6:30PM to do that because everyone\u2019s working.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly a handful of international players are able to fully focus on training and recovery. There\u2019s a big difference in the mentality of it being a professional environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added a caveat: \u201cToulon is probably different to other teams in Elite 1 because they are new, they\u2019re still finding their feet, still trying to figure it out. The coaches still work full-time jobs and turn up to coach us in the evenings. That\u2019s a big change for me because coaches in the PWR, that is their main job.\u201d<\/p>\n

The change in attitude to the women\u2019s game couldn\u2019t come too soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe French women\u2019s team used to be able to put up good results against England, sometimes beating them if not only a couple of points between them,\u201d Rollie explained. \u201cThe French union maybe got a bit of a shock when they realised how big the PWR<\/a> has made women\u2019s rugby in general and how big the World Cup impact was.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scale of the tournament in England, and its wider impact surprised even Rollie. But she understood even before all the data about crowds, TV audiences, social media impressions and viral videos did the rounds.<\/p>\n

She knew when she ran out with her Scotland<\/a> teammates to face England<\/a> at a packed-out Ashton Gate Stadium in this year\u2019s Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup<\/a> quarter-final.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was surreal,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve waited for 10 years of playing women\u2019s rugby for this moment, it was almost like, \u2018Wow, we\u2019ve made it\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve finally grown the game. We\u2019ve finally put women\u2019s rugby on the map. We\u2019ve finally shown everyone that women are able to play rugby and bring in the crowds, and bring in the atmosphere, and bring in the performances.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was, genuinely, so cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

No wonder, then, she hopes to complete one more Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup cycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland full-back Chloe Rollie likes a challenge. How else do you explain leaving the relative certainty of Premiership…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-320352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}